Saturday Night Dungeon: Against the Ogre Horde part 1

After a looooong HeroQuest hiatus, the heroes of the Empite finally take up arms again. This time, The Emperor has heard rumours of a new army under Morcar's control: Ogres! It seems Morcar has sent a chaos sorcerer to find and subdue a band of fiersome ogres, in order to lead them against the Empire. And so our heroes must go out and find the secret ogre fortress, and thwart Morcar's evil plans.
Thus begins the first part of "Against the Ogre Horde": the search for the Ogre Fortress!

Our heroes find themselves in a forest bordering a mountain range, and somewhere hidden in the trees they find three stone slabs blocking some caves. Time to inspect! The heroes have brought their best equipment and a healing potion each.

Morcar has also prepared! The caves are filled with monsters and traps. He has also taken care of some beverages and candy. A wizard musn't get hungry or thirsty while fighting off pesky heroes.

The heroes pick the eastern door. The woman all fail their strength roll against the door, even the mighty Barbarella.

"Step aside lassies!" the dwarf shouts and opens the door. The ladies at the table are not amused. Not much to see there, so they try door number two.

Once again, the dwarf needs to help the ladies and opens the door for them. Five nasty goblins leer at them from the darkness.

The dwarf takes up the front position as Barbarella returns from inspecting the dead end cave.

The goblins soon fall to the attacks of our heroes. They didn't stand a chance.

But then the elf trips over a loose stone in the darkness, and in her fall, she breaks her only healing potion!

They discover a hidden door in the room, which opens into a foul smelling dark cave.

A hidden tomb filled with undead! Three skeletons and two mummies rise up from the floor and shamble towards the elf.

She shoots down a skeleton with her crossbow and takes a few steps back.

The dwarf walks up to the door, valiantly defending the women. He takes out one undead monster after the other.

Morcar's minions try to hit the dwarf, but he defends well.

Soon, the last of the undead falls, and the tomb is cleared.

The elf ventures inside to look for traps and secret doorways, but finds none. The dwarf and sorceress head to the next door.

The dwarf spots a deep pit trap behind the door, and as it can't be disarmed, they decide to try the other door.

But as soon as the elf steps through the doorway, a band of four gonlins ambushes her! Fortunately for her, she is in a tight corridor, so only the first two can attack her.

The other two retreat deeper into the cave while the elf needs to step back to allow room for a crossbow shot, but having no clear shot, she just lets the dwarf do the job for her.

He happily hacks at the hapless goblin, and as they pass the next corner, the remaining two goblins try to kill the weaker sorceress.

But she is not without defense. Her sturdy wooden staff crushes th skull of one goblin, and the dwarf takes care of the other one. Enraged, Morcar casts another chaos spell on the heroes, causing two of them to lose a turn.

Another door leading to a larger room reveals a cupboard and a weapons rack guarded by a fierce looking gargoyle! He growls at the heroes and cracks his whip.

It advances to attack the elf, forcing her to retreat, because her crossbow can't fire in close quarters. It manages to do some damage to the elf!

The dwarf and barbarian take her place and both attack the gargoyle. It is soon defeated and falls to the ground.

The heroes do a search in the corridor and spot some loose rocks in the ceiling that may collapse. So they wisely choose to backtrack to the last of the outside doors to see if that leads into the same cave safely. The elf searches the room for treasure and finds a healing potion. Huzzah!

But as she joins up with the barbarian, a log trap is set off, and rolls over both heroes! Morcars smirks with glee as more body points are lost.

The dwarf opens the western door into the caverns, and spots two small glowing eyes at the back of the dark corridor... It looks like a gargoyle statue!

The wizard boldly steps up, to see if it is magical and cast a spell on it.

She casts Genie, but only manages to roll one skull, and the statue is unharmed. It seems magical spells have no effect on it!

Morcar doesn't want the heroes to meddle with his construct, and prevents the heroes from casting anything at all the next turn. Perhaps his statue can kill a hero if they can't use healing spells! The dwarf steps inside and asks if he can search for traps, as the statue doesn't seem to be alive.

He spots two pit traps down the corridor. As soon as the sorceress enters the hallway, the gargoyle statue's eyes flare up and it spits a fireball her way! It does two damage to her!

She quickly steps aside to safety, hoping the others can clear the way for her. The elf cocks her crossbow...

... and scores three solid hits! The statue fails to defend against such an expertly executed attack, and crumbles to dust. The barbarian hands her rabbit boots to the elf, asking her to go ahead and scout the corridor.

Suddenly a hidden pit trap is set off, and the poor sorceress finds herself at the bottom! She is down to one body point now! Time to cast a healing spell on herself.

With her rabbit boots, the elf nimbly jumps over all the pit traps and finds a hidden door around the corner. More skeletons await! But there is also a treasure chest in the room, so the heroes decide to check it out. It might hold a clue to the whereabouts of the Ogre Stronghold.

The barbarian tries to jump over the first pit trap, but falls in and loses a body point.

The elf tries to attack but her crossbow is very inconvenient here, so she must retreat again. The skeleton attacks!

The dwarf jumps over the first pit trap but falls into the second one. He also loses a body point!

The skeleton pursues the elf and attacks again, scoring a hit!

But now the elf can strike back and destroys the skeleton. She heads back to the room, followed by the others. The barbarian falls into the second pit trap and loses more body points...

The skeleton tries to lure the heroes inside, but the elf shoots it down swiftly. The heroes search for traps, and spot a trigger in front of the chest.

As the dwarf tries to open it, Morcar casts another spell, turning the chest into a Mimic! It immediately attacks the dwarf.

The dwarf heaves his mighty bastard sword and smashes the Mimic into pieces. The elf finds 50 gold pieces that were inside it. The room itself has no treasure though.

Seeing no exit, the heroes must backtrack once more. Grumbling, they try to jump over the pit traps again, and more body points are lost as the dwarf and barbarian fall in again, due to their heavy armour. This time, the heroes decide to explore the only remaining door with the pit trap behind it.

The elf tries to jump to the east, and finds herself in another pit trap! She does a search for traps and hidden doors, and spots a secret door. Her keen elvish ears notice the sounds of four large monsters and a fire!

The others catch up slowly, limping in pain after having crawled out of the pit traps.

The heroes dare not enter the room, afraid to be attacked by all those monsters, but Morcar's cunning minions aren't dumb enough to walk up to the door with the heroes standing at the ready either... It's a standoff!

The elf uses pass through rock to sneak past the monsters and see if she can attack from the rear entrance of the room. But she finds a fimir waiting for her in the corridor!

It attacks her and then flees back into the corridor. The elf decides to ignore it, as it may purposefully lead her into a trap, and instead opens the door. The others have gone in and killed the green chaos warrior.

After a few turns, all chaos warriors are dealt with as well as the fimir in the room. The other fimir mocks the heroes and taunts them, daring them to come at it. So the elf turns around and shoots it. "Bah!" cries Morcar.

The dwarf spots another trap, and manages to disarm it before it goes off. Morcar is disappointed he can't spring those new shiny swinging axe traps... Barbarella opens a door and finds six orcs at a table. They swarm the door.

She uses her bastard sword to kill the orc on her right, so the elf can enter the room. The elf has switched to her shortsword in the meantime, having learned that these cramped caverns are not always a good place to fire a crossbow.

The heroes continue to fight the orcs and clear the room.

As the elf wonders what's behind the western door, the impatient dwarf opens the eastern door and spots two chaos warriors and an ogre inside! "Finally, an ogre! We must be getting close!" he says, and kills the first chaos warrior.

The second chaos warrior soon falls to the dwarf's sword, and the big ogre steps up, blocking the entire door with its bulk.

But it too is no match for the fiersome dwarf, who gets a bit of help from the barbarian.

The heroes find a pit trap and a hidden door in the room, and a corridor with a door at the far end. They decide to ignore the unexplored room and head towards the exit: the door to the Ogre Fortress.

What dangers await our heroes next time? Stay tuned for more adventures!